By what dysfunctional process did the US Democratic Party manage to select a candidate as vapid and insincere as John Kerry? He is a miracle of slippery ineptitude and bungling disingenuousness.
Look at that shifty face and those deceitful eyes: he shouldn't have won a primary against Homer Simpson, never mind secured the Democratic presidential nomination. So naturally, with a look of perfect innocence on his face, Bush is unleashing his attack-dogs on Kerry's disputed Vietnam War record.
Kerry is thick. Thick, thick, thick. What else could he be when he is using his war record in his campaign, even though he denounced the war when he came home? (George Bush at the time was rather gallantly defending Texan airspace in his Convair F 102 against the Gila monster - or was it Quetzelcoatl?) Therefore Kerry's smirking salute at the Democratic convention, his sanctimonious "My name is John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty", must constitute one the most nauseatingly hypocritical moments in US political history.
He served less than four months in Vietnam when others served a year. How? Because, in addition to winning one bronze star and one silver star, he was wounded three times. During his brief tour, Kerry was serving in river-boats called Swifts, and according to a fellow-veteran - unlike Kerry, an authentic Irish-American called John O'Neill - Kerry wrote the citation that resulted in his getting a silver star.
If you believe O'Neill's recently published account, "Unfit for Command" - which O'Neill says has the support of 19 of the 23 officers who served alongside Kerry - the plan was for four of Kerry's squadron of boats to land and put their soldiers ashore, while Kerry stood offshore to give covering fire if need be. A rocket was fired at Kerry's boat by a single boy on the riverbank. Kerry's boat had two twin-mounted machine-guns which returned fire and hit the poor little teenage Vietcong soldier in the legs. Kerry turned his boat to the shore, leapt on to the land and finished off the boy off.
That was it. But when it fell to Kerry to write up the account of the river battle, (because, O'Neill says, no else could be bothered) he said he had been in the initial assault, which O'Neill alleges he wasn't. He reported that when the rocket had been fired, he charged his boat at a riverbank containing a network of entrenched bunkers holding a numerically superior enemy. Not even Jeffrey Archer could maintain that a single boy was superior to an armoured boat with .5 inch machine-guns and 30soldiers aboard.
But Kerry was born lucky (hence the marriage to a Heinz heiress). According to O'Neill, there should normally be two sworn witnesses to a silver star citation; but on this occasion, for reasons which are not too clear, Admiral Zumwait made an immediate award of a medal to man who, without any supporting eye-witness accounts, almost like Idi Amin, had virtually proposed himself for a decoration.
Idi Kerry's bronze star was awarded for rescuing a sailor from his own boat while under fire after a mine had damaged another vessel. That he hauled the man back aboard is not in doubt; but he was simply an officer doing his duty.
According to O'Neill, Idi again wrote up the citation, alleging that the unit's six vessels were being shot at along 5,000 metres of a 75-yard wide river. If that had been so, the boats would have been riddled with gunfire. Yet not one of them had a single bullet-hole. By O'Neill's account, 14 separate sworn affidavits from fellow officers engaged in this incident rebut Idi's account of this incident, insisting they were not under fire.
As for Idi's wound-medals, the purple hearts, Rear Admiral William Schachte insists that Kerry's first wound was self-inflicted when he recreationally fired a grenade too close to the shore and was hit by his own shrapnel. The injury was tiny and no enemy was near, but Kerry sought and got a purple heart.
To top it all, Idi has repeatedly alleged that his part in the invasion of Cambodia changed his life - and of course, that's the kind of thing you can say when the files are closed. But now they're open. He didn't take part of the invasion of Cambodia. Fact. All this has been reported in the US, albeit only half-heartedly, but not at all in the Irish media.
John Kerry doesn't know when to shut up - perhaps because he been riding the unquestioning Boston-Irish-Catholic ticket for so long. This is a constituency which considers that Shannon and Colleen are Irish names, that men and women really were hanged for the wearing of the green, and that Kerry is an Irish toponymic. There's one Kerry listed in the Dublin telephone directory; 22 Wongs.
The man is both arrogant and stupid: Idi Ot. He now boasts about his role in a war even though he later opposed it, having already festooned himself with medals. He is utterly blind to the moral inconsistency of his various positions. And for that ignorant Irish audience which believes that he is a peace candidate, he voted for the invasion of Iraq. Furthermore, a putative President Kerry (which heaven forfend) would be as morally justified in ordering a hasty exit from Iraq as a driver leaving the pedestrian he had just run over.
Kerry is a charlatan, one who is about to be hoist on his own petard of Vietnam, and all because he couldn't keep his trap shut.
And what a ugly little trap it is too.